Start-Up Innovation Challenge 2017

10/27/2017

The application process is now closed for the Start-Up Innovation Challenge. What an international harvest of innovative start-ups for this second edition!

Start-ups are coming from across the world to compete in the Challenge: Canada, Israel, Singapore, France, USA, Spain, Northern Europe... This year we have received more entries than ever and the quality of submissions has been incredibly high. The judging panel, which will convene on the 27th November – the day before Fi Europe opens – will have the challenging task of selecting only two winners among the 10 shortlisted candidates.

The Start-up Innovation Challenge aims to reward innovative ingredient projects, carried out by start-ups that have brought something completely new and unexpected to the food and health markets. It gives them the opportunity to pitch their idea to the whole host of Food & Beverage industry players that make up Fi Europe’s 1300 exhibitors and more than 25,000 visitors.

Testimonials – Winners 2016

3f Bio - Jim Laird, CEO

Winner Best Innovation Award

“We were delighted to win the Start-Up Innovation award at HiE 2016. This provided a great springboard for 3f, and in the last year we have completed a seed funding round, we have de-risked the technology, and we are finalising pilot plant in partnership with a large agri-industrial partner.

We are committed to ‘making protein sustainable’ but will only do so by working with best partners, and look forward to making new contacts this year.”

GreenFood50 - Marc Arts, CEO Winner Best Natural Ingredient Award

“Winning the Innovation Challenge was beneficial for us as strong recognition of the innovativeness of our quinoa ingredients. We also got a lot of exposure in the food media which increased the awareness of GreenFood50 at potential customers. With the support we got from Naturex, we have been able to develop some great new quinoa applications.”

Award categories and Prices

After having presented their projects in front of a judging panel of recognized experts and journalists, two start-ups will be rewarded.

Best Innovation Award 2017

The winner of this prize will receive:

A personalized acceleration program to set up or expand his activity in Provence, provided by Vaucluse Provence Attractivité (VPA), the economic development agency for the Vaucluse, Southern France. In addition to this program, VPA’s partners offer the following:

Terralia, french cluster for agriculture and food vegetal sectors offers a one year membership. The winner will benefit from Terralia’s network to get in touch with experts of vegetal sector in France, the opportunity to participate to Terralia events and to be supported in the development of his project.

The PEEV is a tool for development and transfer of eco-friendly plant extraction technologies. PEEV offers on the same site, innovative eco-friendly technologies through semi-industrial pilot equipment. The PEEV offers a one year membership and a personal diagnostic to include eco-friendly plant extraction technologies in his company production processes.

La Cité du Végétal and Créativa (business incubators, dedicated to the promotion of vegetal innovation) offers 6 months in one of their offices.

and either

a bespoke lead generation campaign developed by UBM, the opportunity to reach a target audience within a database of 250,000+ industry contacts with unique content such as interviews, blog posts and video,

or a stand at Hi Europe 2018 or Fi Europe 2019.

Best Natural Ingredient Award, sponsored by Naturex

A special “Natural Ingredients” prize will be given by Naturex for innovative projects promoting new extraction methods (green technologies), new plant extracts, innovative ingredient concepts, etc,… Naturex sources, manufactures and markets natural specialty ingredients for the food, health and cosmetic industries. Naturex offers the winner six months of privileged access to its advanced equipment and laboratories, a dedicated pilot for the scale-up of the project and regulatory or marketing resources, in order to assist the project leaders in all critical stages of development.